Around the House

#50 · Extended back scratcher

Tuck it inside your collar and manoeuvre it carefully to reach that impossible spot. Relief from unreachable itches.

The itch between the shoulder blades is positioned, apparently by design, exactly where neither hand reaches. A chopstick adds about 23cm to your reach and turns a genuinely irritating problem into a solved one.

How to do it

1. Take the chopstick over your shoulder or up from below, whichever your shoulder prefers.
2. Use the blunt end, and rub in small circles rather than dragging.
3. Move in small increments - the itch is rarely exactly where you think it is.

Why it works

There is a genuine reason this spot exists. The upper back is one of the few areas of the body that neither hand can comfortably reach in either direction, and it also has relatively sparse nerve innervation, which makes itches there harder to localise precisely. Hence the hunting around.

Tips & warnings

• Blunt end only. The pointed end will break skin faster than you expect on a spot you cannot see.
• If you are scratching the same patch daily for weeks, that is worth mentioning to a GP rather than solving with a stick.